Gonzaga vs. St. John's: Zags leave no doubt in dominant victory

Another effort like on Saturday and Brigham Dung goes home.

Thanks for the post and Meech was my star tonight! There was NO press that Meech didn’t handle. Very good team win. My Bracket looks like a fence full of chicken wire, with holes everywhere! Nice win Zags

Like you said, I think that this was possibly the best all around game the Zags have played all year and it couldn’t have felt better.
I am at school out East and a handful of my friends are die hard St. John’s fans. Being able to silence their trash talk by handling them tonight felt so sweet.

All around great performance, finally a great team defensive game too!

Inside, outside, and on the defensive side of the ball.

In fact when the Zags were making a few bone-head mistakes in the last 5 minutes, being hesitant on offense as usaual, there defense was relentless.

Goodson had a big steal underneath the rim.

Everytime St. Johns got to within ten-eleven points Gonzaga put the hammer down, got it back to 15 or so.

We have our starting 5 in Gray, Sacre, Goodson, Harris, and Carter; with a solid 3-4 players coming off the bench in Olynick, Dower, Stockton, and Hart; everyone contributed positively, [although I am sure Stockton was more upset with himself over that gimmie turnover mid court pass than we were].

Goodson once again stepped up in the tournament, Carter plays like he has been here before.

Speaking of the coaching performance, and Meech’s – one thing I noticed St. John’s messed up badly was that they defended Meech all over the half court – even if he was nine feet beyond the arc. In any WCC game that would never happen – they’d be clogging our scoring paths down low instead. Seems like the St. John’s scouting report was awful or ignored, at least with Meech.

I got the one that counted, Gonzaga over St. Johns!

I agree with everyone, it was a good effort. We would have won by 30+ if we had not missed so many layups and dunks!!!

I hope the Zags can continue this level of play. However, I’m not sure if we’ve seen the Zags have so much success shooting and rebounding at the same time this season — 53.8% from the field, including 60% from three. While I’m glad to see it, I’m a bit nervous whether they’ll be able to keep it up.

Also, despite having lost in the NIT, given how close St. Mary’s played us this year, I think this game shows they were certainly good enough to be in tournament — and probably should have been in over UAB, VCU, or USC.

Having said that.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not sure what this ESPN stat was supposed to say:
“Gonzaga and Richmond both won Thursday as double digit seeds. The West Coast Conference now has 18 wins as a 10 seed or worse, the most of any school. The Atlantic 10 has 16, tied for 4th-most”

The Zag Man was screaming at the TV last night cheering on our Zags to victory. He was a bit upset when the network switched over to the Michigan State/UCLA game as MSU had made a miraculous comeback and had a chance to win or tie the game. The reason the Zag Man was upset was that he was enjoying every second of the game we had against St. John’s! What a big win by the team, who played extremely well in almost every phase of the game! St. John’s is a very talented team that shot the ball well last night, however we just played a better game than they did. I was particularly impressed with our selection of shots during the game, as we rarely took a bad shot that did not have a decent chance of going in. When we do that, we are very efficient and make it difficult for any team to beat us. I also thought defensively we played with heart and desire and our rebounding was superb! It was just a fun game to watch!

I agree with Zach that Meech had the most impressive game of the night! He really played in control and was strong with the ball against a pressing St. John’s team. He never took a bad shot, passed the ball beautifully, and made his free throws! Defensively, he was his typical "in-your-face" defender. Meech has lifted his own game as David Stockton has improved, and he’s playing beautifully now! I also agree that Kelly Olynk had an outstanding game! Kelly came out with "guns blazing" and he is just tough to stop when he’s in that mind-set! He had great energy attacking the rim and the backboard. Great job, Kelly!

I look forward to playing BYU tomorrow night. They are a disciplined team and Jimmer is probably the Player-of-the-Year in my estimation. We need to let someone else beat us from BYU and make it tough on Jimmer all night long! He’ll make his shots, but I think we can contain him to less than his season average. We need to allow Rob, Elias, Sam, and Kelly to attack the rim tomorrow night. Our front-court played excellent last night and we need them to attack the same way against BYU. We have a real advantage against BYU in the front-court and we need to take advantage of that. If we play with the same intensity and intelligence that we’ve done for the last month or so, I predict we will win tomorrow night. I had predicted we would beat St. John’s by 5 last night, but I was obviously wrong. I’m now saying the Zags by 6 tomorrow night against BYU!

Looking back at mid December, I can recall many a nasty statements made about this team. Today I’m eating those words. And loving every minute of it.

I haven’t seen the Zags in person since the open-house at the start of the season. Both my wife and I easily noticed how little cohesion there was compared to prior years at the same time. Last night, with the starting 5 on the floor they played like a 5 headed monster. Didn’t see many disconnects or people standing around looking lost. Even KO and Sam seemed to fit in to the machine.
And Meech – you made me smile man – looked like you were having fun!

Couple shots of Manny on the end of the bench last night. Looked like someone just ran over his dog. Sure wonder what put him in the doghouse? His skill set would have been well suited for last nights game. I can’t be the only one that was nervous when DS, KO and Hart were substituted in at the same time last night.

KO out performed expectation, DS under performed and Hart was Hart.

I, like the rest of the bracket-junkies, surfed between game upon game both yesterday and as I write. (1 vs 16, KU-BU & OH ST-USTA playing at present) One can expect the usual beatdowns of a 1 vs 16 or 2 vs 15 but nothing I’ve seen yet compares to the 11 vs 6 (from the almighty Big East) that I witnessed last night. Honestly, with no bias, the Zags were head and shoulders better than any team I saw. If records are kept on assists per baskets made (20 of 28 .714%) this may be a tournament record. Or, perhaps rebound ratio (better than 2 to 1 varying on whose stats you read) . Certainly a 1 vs 16 holds that record but how about an 11 over a 6?

This total team effort from came out of the same bunch of lost, bumbling misfits we witnessed just a few months ago. Who’s responsible for the transformation?

Oh, by the way, Vegas opened the BYU game as a “pick’em.” As of 30 mins ago it’s GU by1. An unranked 11 seed FAVORED over a ranked, Jimmer-led, 3 seed? Those guys in Vegas are no dummies.